Synchronize: Checkmate

Synchronize

Synchronize is a science fest hosted by Bishop Cotton Boys’ School, Bangalore since 2008. This includes various events related to science and offers various other school/colleges to participate and display their talents. Going through the years it has even become one of the largest science fests in Bangalore. In the recent years, the ongoing pandemic (COVID-19) has made Synchronize online and also has let it expand from a fest only for those from/in Bangalore to everyone across India! This has lead to many new events and much more fun!

An interesting event that was suggested was a chess/chess variant event and it was to be conducted on lichess! Checkmate!

Checkmate 2021 Official Logo

How Checkmate came about?

The first version Checkmate happened last year (2020), but Who proposed this event in a science fest? How was a chess related event allowed in a science fest?

I remember getting a call from the Deputy School Captain of our School one evening where he asked me whether I was willing to support a chess event for our school’s famous science fest. I was honestly shocked at first considering that I never expected to ever be part of Synchronize and that it was a chess event in a science fest. I was told that he had seen me playing chess at school with friends and didn’t know anyone else who knew about chess in our grade (I mean... I’ll neither completely agree or disagree with that). I obviously accepted the offer!

The proposal to start the chess event was made by AkashPisharody along with Uncle_Pocero. They were both from a grade lower than mine and so for their proposal to be accepted (especially considering that it was a new event), they needed someone from my grade to support it. I had agreed to be a part of the Checkmate team, and was asked to choose someone else from my grade. I immediately suggested octobatt as he was one of the strongest players I had known at school. He too agreed to join in in spite of his previous commitment to another event in Synchronize called, “Blogger”.

Our Initial Lichess Test Team

Why Lichess?

Thanks to AkashPisharody and Uncle_Pocero for choosing lichess as the right platform to conduct this event. octobatt did suggest chess.com, but after comparing a few features between the two sites and because of the ease in conducting the event in lichess, we didn’t even tell AkashPisharody and Uncle_Pocero that we had considered chess.com.

We particularly appreciated that in lichess we could make a team or do literally anything without any requirement of any kind of premium membership!

How the event went?

I always thought that not many would be interested in chess, but at our school selections itself we had 33 people join in (view tournament) and then at the event we had about 40 members join (view tournaments).

We had conducted all tournaments in the Lichess Swiss format as all players got to play the same amount of games and had decided to keep it unrated to prevent any kind of discouragement from participants due to loss of rating. We included various variants such as Antichess, Crazyhouse and Chess960 and our last game was of the Hand & Brain Type! (view finals)

Checkmate 2020 List of Tournaments

Checkmate obviously didn’t stop and was even conducted this year (2021) by Cognitive_Overload36 and Dr_Ineffable assisted by Vijay_5. It was a success and they did have a lot of fun conducting the event. Checkmate!

https://www.youtube.com/N1IjKw7zvHo Synchronize 2021 Opening Ceremony